active FTX Global Winter Textures Missing

[Captain Z]

Hello,

 

The winter textures from Global have recently gone missing. It only seems to display what appears to be Fall textures. I've gone to different parts of Northern Europe and North America, and it's the same everywhere. The airports are displaying the proper winter textures, but out side the border of the airport coverage, Global only shows Fall. I've included a picture at Porta Westfalica to show what it looks like everywhere I go in Global. I'm using P3D. Any help would be appreciated. I believe I saw a post in the Open LC forum with the same issue.

 

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[Captain Z]

I've done some testing today. No matter what season, month, day, or time of day I choose when starting up the sim, global always loads Fall textures. Once I am in the sim, I can switch to another season, and then switch back again, and it will display the proper seasonal textures. However, having to load everything up 3 times in a row kills my VAS. All airports load correctly the first time, with whatever season is selected. I've tried cycling through selections in FTX central, but Global refuses to load anything but Fall textures when starting up the sim, no matter where or when in the world the flight starts. As far as changes since things last worked properly, the only new installations have been the latest orbx LIBS and ESSA.

 

I hope there is some way to fix this, as I would like to fly at other times of the year besides Fall. Thank you.

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi there,

 

I'm not sure I understand the issue correctly. As far as I know P3D always loads into the default flight, with its fixed location and date and thus season. How exactly would you choose a date when starting up the sim?

 

The fact that the correct textures display eventually points to the default flight or your specific startup procedure as the culprit. Besides, it's pretty much impossible to selectively remove seasonal variants or alter the seasons control files in such a matter that they would only display fall textures.

 

Cheers, Holger

[Captain Z]

Thank you for responding. With the release of P3D 2.0, LM added a startup screen that allows you to choose your aircraft, weather, location, time, season, etc., avoiding the extra step of loading into the default. I believe most use it now. All FTX products have loaded fine, until recently. All FTX airports load into the proper season, no matter what I select (as shown in the original post photo of Porta Westfalica), but now, all Global coverage areas load up as Fall textures, no matter what. The only things that changed with the sim since this started was the installation of the latest Libs and ESSA. Again, Global loaded the proper season just fine for the past year. Just not any more.

 

Note: This photo is just a random one I found online showing the P3D startup screen you get when starting P3D since 2.0

 

[Captain Z]

I've also noticed that others have recently experienced problems like this, just recently, as well. I don't believe it is coincidence.

 

On 2/2/2016 at 9:36 AM, VonClout said:

Hi Bermuda425,

 

I encountered this issue over the weekend. I was trying the new Welshpool airfield with EU-England and while the airport had the winter snow textures the rest of the sim was set to the usual snowless winter textures. I checked the date and time, put them a back a few weeks, went back to the sim and all the textures were now synced to use the normal winter snowless textures.

 

I also had a quick fly out of EGKA Shoreham last night and had almost exactly the same problem. The area around Shoreham, roughly about 10 square miles, was set to the spring textures, after this area the rest of the textures were set to the usual winter ones. Again I set the date back a few weeks, came back to the sim and all the textures had synced again. The only thing I didn't have a problem with were the trees, they were all looking very bare and winter-like.

 

I don't think this is an OrbX issue, I'm leaning towards thinking that the sim's calendar is a bit cranky!

 

Simon.

 

On 2/4/2016 at 3:46 AM, Bermuda425 said:

 

Thanks a lot Simon for sharing your experiences with me! Good to know that I'm not the only one with the issue. I think this topic covers a similar issue:

 

Greetings,

Bermuda425

 

[Bermuda425]

I can once more confirm this find. A few minutes ago I did a flight to Drumheller, AB, Canada in snowy weather on today's date. Getting closer to Drumheller, green texture squares appeared. Also interesting is, that in some moments, the green spaces started converting to white ones, like a puzzle (visible when comparing shots 4 and 5).

 

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi guys,

 

these are different issues! What Bermuda425 is describing is actually the sim's normal behavior. For east and south of Drumheller the default seasons control file assigns spring variants for the month of March, hence the green textures. However, since your weather situation includes active snowfall the sim dynamically switches back to the "hard winter" sets; unfortunately, it does so without blending adjacent tiles and in a haphazard/random manner, which is why it looks so odd. It has been like this since FSX was released. The work-around is to refresh the scenery library while in flight, which will load the winter textures all at once across the local area.

 

I still don't know what Captain Z's issue is but it's not with the seasons control file or the textures. Also, the Orbx libraries or ESSA don't have anything to do with those files so it has to be something else that, initially, prevents the correct textures from loading. Most likely the correct date isn't properly sent to the sim via the setup screen though I can't think of a reason why that would be so unless it's somehow linked to the current default flight scenario. It really is only the date (or, more precisely the month) that determines which seasonal variants are loaded for a specific location.

 

Cheers, Holger    

[Captain Z]

Thank you for the response.

 

My next question would then be.......what is the difference between how global handles the date and season, and how FTX airports and regions handle them ?

 

From my testing since this issue popped up, all airports and regions properly load whatever season is selected. If the correct date wasn't being sent to the sim,  wouldn't all FTX airports and regions also show the wrong date and season ? Airports in both region areas and in global areas all load up the season selected. For example, if I choose winter, Porta Westfalica displays winter textures. If I choose spring or summer, it displays them as well. But the surrounding global area only shows Fall, every time.

 

If I choose a regional airport, like Homer (PAHO) in region NA, then both it and the region display winter (if I chose winter) and summer textures (if I choose summer). The same goes for all airports and regions, as I have tested many.

 

So, maybe knowing the difference with how Global handles the date and time vs airports and regions would help track down the problem.

 

Thank you for your continued attention to this problem. I really do appreciate it.

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi there,

 

there's a difference between how seasonal variants are handled in landclass files and photoreal files. Our airports have photoreal ground coverage for which the seasonal progression is hard-coded, meaning that information is encoded in the .bgl file itself and the sim uses strictly the month to determine which variant to display. That's why you see the correct progression at any of our stand-alone airport add-ons.

 

With landclass textures the sim reads the active season control file (which has the same spatial resolution as those landclass tiles, i.e., ~1.5 sq km) and uses that information, along with the current month, to pick the seasonal variant. For each FTX Region we include our own custom seasons file (see link below as to how this works in PNW) and those appear to be working correctly for you. Outside of the Regions it's the default global control file that takes over; it's "seasons.bgl" located in \Scenery\BASE\Scenery. Unless you installed some third-party seasons control file that overrides that file. As far as I know though, we are the only ones providing custom seasons control files.

 

It's a good point though that the date appears to be read correctly by the sim, otherwise the airports and regions wouldn't change as expected. At the same time, since you state that you can force the correct textures via repeated re-loads, the default control file itself seems to be OK too. Something gets "stuck" but I can't think of what or how.

 

Perhaps try switching to Global/non-hybrid and temporarily deactivate openLC entries meaning check whether the same behavior occurs with just default scenery/landclass.

 

Cheers, Holger

 

 

 

[Captain Z]

OK. So a couple of things have happened in the sim the past couple days. I'll start with the results of doing what was asked.

 

I deactivated all the openLC entries in scenery, and loaded up some flights. The results were the same. All airports displayed the proper seasonal textures, while the surrounding area displayed fall textures (and looked kind of crappy without openLC). I assume unchecking openLC doesn't deactivate Global or Vector, but at least unchecking all openLC items didn't affect the problem in any way, it seems.

 

Now, I always fly using the current date, time and month. Whatever day it is, it will be in the sim when I fly. The most I will vary things is if it's late at night,  and I want to fly during the day, I'll roll the clock back to daytime hours. Otherwise, I always fly using the current date. I bring this up, because it seems March is the changeover in the sim to spring textures. I started up a flight, to test things, and the airport was displaying spring textures......as was the surrounding area (to a point, more on this later). I went ahead and rolled the date back to January, and the same problem occurred. Winter airport, fall surroundings. I started up the sim using current date, and spring airport, spring surroundings (again, to a point). I hit the skies real quick to survey the area, and this is what I discovered......

 

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Where previously the airports displayed winter textures, and the rest of the world was Fall for as far as the eye could see (and everywhere I flew)....now the airports are at spring textures, with the surrounding world also displaying spring.....with patches of winter everywhere, as far as the eye could see, and fly.

 

Perhaps this is normal for spring, in march, in the sim ? I just don't remember it doing that last winter when I flew. But maybe I just never flew in areas that were supposed to be this way. It still looks strange, so I would be surprised if it is normal.

 

So that's where things are currently at. If I roll back the date to winter, I get winter airports, and fall global. The current date, I now get spring airports, spring global, with patches of winter global everywhere. I'm sorry for all the trouble. I just want to get the sim back to flyable again. It just didn't work flying around a world in fall, with winter airports everywhere. And now it's spring airports and world, with random patches of winter in the world. Again, thank you for any help or ideas you may have on this issue.